For Everything a Reason
by BeccaBreaksThings
Summary: Stuck in Raccoon City when outbreak hits, ex-S.T.A.R.S medic Rebecca Chambers is once again forced to fight for survival amidst the nightmarish undead. Only this time she's alone. That is, until a familiar face shows up out of the blue - but he should've been long gone, right? Some people are just meant to be together, and if only their circumstances were different. Rebecca/Billy.


**AN: Since I've had this idea in my head for something like a year now, I finally decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, it's been eons since I've really sat down and played my way through the games, so I warn you that there are probably going to be a fair few AU-ish elements and other odd things, but bear with. Also while I'm at it - nothing you recognise here belongs to me. I wish it did, especially Rebecca Chambers because she's my gaming idol, but y'know. Anyway, rambling aside - please enjoy my madness!**

* * *

Rebecca brought her hand up to her throat, clutching at the skin-warm chain which rested there night and day. She'd had the catch replaced recently and was trying to make it feel like _his _again – it was all she had left of her fateful meeting with Billy Coen. She guessed he was laying low somewhere for the time being, if he even made it out at all.

The young medic shook her head and forced herself not to think about it. She was supposed to be packing for a swift departure in the morning, since Jill had advised they all get the hell out of Raccoon before things got even worse. They were already pariahs, named as drug addicts and loons by the press that sought any explanation but the truth which would get them in trouble with a company that could obliterate them. Hell, for all she knew, Umbrella had its spies planted to make sure only the best cover stories ran. The very notion made her skin crawl.

It was bad enough that she'd lost her first real job so soon after attaining it – and her parents had been _so _proud! - but to think that her position on the Bravo team had ruined any hopes she had of being something much bigger... Rebecca was _livid._

She shoved another shirt into her rucksack, pushing it down with the heel of her hand to make more room for all the ammo Barry had given her for protection. Her gun almost never left its place at her hip, hidden by her jacket or the over-sized shirts she had a sudden fondness for wearing. Anything, Rebecca thought, to keep my lifeline a secret. The last thing she wanted was for 'gun nut' to join the list of supposed instabilities stacked against her.

Ten minutes later and she was ready to go – it was a shame her ride wasn't coming around for another twelve or so hours. Jill was going to stop by and pick Rebecca up, then the two of them would hit the road until Chris relayed the first location in their intended assault against Umbrella. None of their small surviving group were willing to let what had happened to their friends and colleagues slide.

Rebecca took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut against a flood of unpleasant thoughts. She had to stick out her hands to catch herself on the edge of her bed to keep from falling to her knees, unable to think over the sound of her own fast-beating heart. Times like that she wished she still had her dog. At least he would have been some small comfort, a much better one than the television she forced herself to switch on just for the sound.

Feeling alone was going to be the death of her.

"Get over it, Becky," she murmured, hoping her own shaky voice would do something to calm her nerves. Since the incident, Rebecca Chambers had a hard time finding a single moment of peace. She supposed it must have been the same for all of them, but only Jill had confided in her with her own feelings of unease. The two of them often shared concerns over sandwiches at Wendy's.

With friendly confession in mind, Rebecca reached out to snag her phone from her bedside table, scrolling through the saved numbers until she came to Jill's. She held the device to her ear and waited patiently through three rings until she was lulled into false security by Jill's voice-mail. Electing not to leave a message after the beep, Rebecca dropped the phone and heaved a sigh.

She wasn't hungry, so she couldn't eat to pass the time; she'd already had a bath just hours before, so that was out of the question, too; and there was nobody in her neighbourhood worth a spontaneous visit. Rebecca resigned herself to a night of quiet and trying to fend off flashbacks of zombies, hunters, and tyrants.

The television wasn't showing much of interest aside from an old comedy she'd already seen a hundred times or more, so she settled for leaving the news to blare out in the background. There were a few unexplained deaths about Raccoon City, bodies found in 'worrying circumstances' – nothing Rebecca would be able to investigate after her stint with the S.T.A.R.S. A part of her, admittedly, wanted to take a look.

An unwelcome voice in the back of her mind made a suggestion which sent shivers running down her spine. What if those 'worrying circumstances' were the same as they had been in the mansion? If it was spreading, the civilians needed to flee ASAP.

The young medic laughed at her own jumpy state, thrilled to think what little sanity she had left was wasted on paranoia and suspicion. She and her team-mates – could she count Billy Coen as one of those? - had dealt with the virus once. If it came to it, the remaining few could do it again, couldn't they?

Rebecca nodded to make herself feel better and moved to sit on her dusty old couch. Looking around the tiny apartment she rented, the girl almost wished she'd put more effort into finding somewhere to stay. Or at least invested in furniture which hadn't been stuck in somebody's garage for the last three years, unloved and in poor condition. She consoled herself with the thought that she wouldn't be around much longer.

With home furnishings on her mind, Rebecca managed to drift into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

* * *

_Bang! Bang, bang, bang!_

Fists on the hard wood door roused Rebecca from her sleep, pounding incessantly as she scrambled for consciousness enough that she wouldn't fall flat on her face. Luckily enough, she reached the door without any major casualties – unless banging her foot against the leg of her coffee table counted.

"Jill?" she called, just loud enough to be heard over the knocks. "Is that you?" Through sleep-blurry eyes, Rebecca looked over at the clock on her wall. If it was Jill, she was at least two hours too early. Something had to be wrong.

_Bang, bang!_

"Let me in!" a man's voice from the other side yelled between pants and wheezes. "Let me in! Oh, god, hurry!"

One hand flew to the gun at her hip, the other set itself on the handle and turned slowly. "Sir," Rebecca said, in her best 'Officer Chambers' voice. "I'm going to need you to calm down and tell me what's happened."

Before she could open the door a cautious crack and block entry to her apartment with her body, Rebecca was shoved aside as the stranger bolted in. He paid her no mind as he slammed the door shut and slid the deadbolt across.

Rebecca was quick to stand and aim her gun carefully at the panting man's back. He was a great deal taller than she was, and broader, too – she was suddenly thankful for the time Chris had taken to teach her about defending herself from larger assailants. God bless Mr. Redfield.

"Sir," she snapped, focusing her eyes on his damp t-shirt. "Turn around and put your hands above your head. I don't want any trouble, but I can't help you until you do that."

He complied surprisingly quickly, red-tinged eyes meeting the medic's own. "Out there... There were... I can't..."

"Calm down," Rebecca urged, her heart beating fast and hard in her chest. Cold sweat trickled down her back as she scanned him for any injuries and, sure enough, there was blood on one leg of his jeans. She flinched on instinct. "Did somebody attack you?"

"Yes. No. Not... Not a person." The stranger looked as though he was about to reach out to grab her, but stopped when his gaze flickered to her gun. "I can't... can't explain."

When she got a good look at his face – all sharp angles and brooding contrast – Rebecca thought she recognised him as the man who enjoyed noisy sex and lived two doors down. She'd had a word with his girlfriend about it in her very first week living there and had soon been laughed away. "Tell me your name," she said, hoping a few easy questions would set him at ease so he could explain. If what was happening was anything like Rebecca thought, the man would probably need one last human conversation before he... She shook her head and tried to focus on his voice alone.

"George Rodriguez." His wide-eyes had locked onto her face. "You're... from the papers."

Rebecca only nodded. "That doesn't matter right now, George, I need you to tell me what happened to you."

"Maya... She came home this-" he gulped "- she came home different."

"Different how?"

"She looked sick," George said, finally gaining control of his breathing. He favoured his uninjured leg, even stretching to prop himself up with a hand on the table Rebecca used to hold her keys. "When she came back, said she'd been in a fight with this madman on her way home."

It was Rebecca's turn to begin to shake. She counted back from ten in her mind, an old trick she'd mastered to calm herself. When she was sure she had a grip on her emotions, the young woman asked, "Did she say anything about being bitten, George."

He nodded, looking down at his leg for a fraction of a second. There was a long moment where neither of them said a word – Rebecca was far too caught up in calculations to spare a second for speech. Eventually, George broke their silence.

"What's going on?" he asked, toppling sideways as his strength gave out. He groaned and raised a hand to wipe at the sweat beading on his forehead, drained of all colour. "What's wrong with... wrong with Maya?"

Rebecca cleared her throat to buy herself time. Just looking at him, she suspected George didn't have long before he shut down and gave in to the virus entirely – her hand inadvertently tightened around her gun. "I'll go check," she said, flashing what was intended to be a reassuring smile. Talking to George greatly reduced the possibility of her actually being able to shoot him when the time came. She was glad of her mind supplying a friendlier, if cowardly, alternative.

George nodded, leaning heavily against the wall by the door. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when all he could manage was a kind of gurgling gasp.

"Just stay put, okay? Everything will be fine." Lying was far easier than Rebecca wanted it to be, but she had no time to question her morals. Just as she was about to leave, she remembered Jill. Dammit. The medic knew she couldn't hang around if her apartment building was becoming a viral hotspot – but what if Jill still came?

Rebecca rushed to the drawer in her kitchen where she kept all kinds of miscellany, happy to find a few push-pins and some paper. She scribbled a note briefly explaining what had happened, and that if Jill made it to the apartment, to be careful if she had to come inside. After some consideration, Rebecca jotted down that the RCPD was to be their meet-up point. She couldn't think of a place more fitting than one sure to be stocked with gun-toting officers. If they could handle themselves against the monsters.

She shook her head against those unhealthy thoughts and made a break for the door, but not before grabbing the bag she'd packed the night before. That ammunition would come in handy – there was a medi-kit in there, too.

George had closed his eyes and looked as though he was sleeping – thankfully, he still looked human, but not for long. Rebecca murmured a goodbye and slipped out into the corridor. Even as she stuck the note to her door with the pin, she heard it.

An unearthly groaning somewhere to her right. Maya?

Rebecca bit her lip against an involuntary gasp, turning on her heel to assess the problem. There was the woman who had laughed her away, only her smirking mouth was a mess of bloody red and hanging flesh. Where once she'd had pleasantly smooth skin, a gently curvaceous figure, there were scrapes and gashes from George's attempts to defend himself. The worst of all, perhaps, was the blank look in her eye as she stumbled towards Rebecca.

Two shots later and Maya was on her back, blood pooling around her head and shoulders. Rebecca was struck by the reality of the situation – she had no time to be afraid, to panic and pander to her childish fears. She'd survived once, she could do it again.

Only this time she was alone. Sure, she could head back and hide out in her apartment in hopes that Jill would make it to her, but what was the use in that? Even if Rebecca was lucky enough to take the coward's way out and live to tell the tale, didn't she have some obligation to help other civilians? Even in the face of her walking nightmares, Rebecca Chambers was not that selfish.

Barry's ammunition was going to be a godsend.

* * *

Rebecca was lucky enough to have made it down and out of her apartment building with only two more altercations. She'd simply shoved her way past the first, a zombie whose leg had been pinned to the wall by someone's cleverly placed kitchen knife, but the second had been blocking her exit to the point where she had to act more extremely. It took her three shots to get it in the head – she wished she'd devoted a few hours more to target practice and less to pouring over medical journals.

Stepping into the streets was like something out of a horror movie. Clustered together by the front of a grocery store were a group of them, all on their knees and grazing on something... _someone. _Not far from that crowd were three big, black bodies belonging to dogs which had once been somebody's pets. It looked like there were at least a few people capable of figuring out how to defend themselves still ready to do so, judging by the light smattering of felled zombies on the otherwise desolate road. A good sign if ever there was one.

The path which would eventually lead Rebecca to the RCPD was to the left of her apartment building, and from there she'd need to follow it for a few blocks. Along the way she was sure there would be plenty of opportunity to at least _try _and help somebody in need. The few houses or stores which she knew old friends frequented would need to be checked, too.

God, she wished she hadn't been hiding away for the last two days. If Rebecca had elected to spend her remaining time in Raccoon City out doing the things a girl her age should have, maybe she would have noticed sooner. Maybe she could have...

She stopped herself with a pinch on her upper arm. If Jill hadn't noticed and called, then how could she expect herself to see the signs? Umbrella had the brains to get around simple things like a few resigned S.T.A.R.S. and a city full of people – however they'd gone about spreading the infection, it felt a lot like bragging to see the world she knew turned upside down. They had really out-done themselves.

Rebecca ducked into the doorway of her building to dig through her bag, since there was no use carting around all that extra weight if she'd need to make a swift break for freedom. Once she had forced herself into a warm leather jacket with enough room to store a decent amount of ammunition in the pockets, and clipped her medi-kit to her waist, Rebecca was ready. No sense in delaying the inevitable – she took her first steps onto the Raccoon City streets.

Her converse shoes – almost exactly the same as the favoured green pair she'd been wearing on the day of the Mansion incident – carried her quickly and quietly. Rebecca had made it around her first corner before she encountered any real incidents.

Backing into the cracked windows of a store-front was a young woman whose hands were wrapped tightly around the shoulders of a much smaller someone she tried to pull with her. They were both screaming and yelling, but it wasn't until Rebecca jogged closer that she saw why. Two of the infamous walking undead were staggering towards them, jaws hanging slack with sheer want for the taste of human flesh.

Rebecca didn't trust her shooting skills enough to take aim from as far away as she was, nor did she want to endanger the woman and what looked like her daughter by failing to take them down quickly enough. Her only option was to get within range of complete certainty and, luckily, Officer Chambers ran track once upon a time.

A bead of sweat trickled down from under her hairline as Rebecca's feet pounded against the asphalt. She kept her eyes on the woman who was frozen in fear, watching as she shoved her child behind her just as Rebecca skidded to a stop in front of them. She was a little too close to the infected, close enough that a stiff hand grazed her arm before she had the time to plant a bullet in its greying forehead.

The girl gagged on impulse, taken over by repulsion for a fraction of a second. In her mind's eye she saw the faces of her dead team-mates, of her friends – most prevalent of which was Edward Dewey. Rebecca recalled seeing the vacant look in his eye as his teeth penetrated the flesh of a passenger on the Ecliptic Express. She remembered how he had looked with...

"Help us!" the woman behind her shrieked and sobbed, snapping Rebecca out of her dark reverie just in time to help her avoid becoming the next meal. She was lucky to be small enough to evade with ease, ducking out from under her predator and taking three steps to its left. With both hands on her gun to steady it, Rebecca said a silent prayer and shot once, twice, three times until the zombies were floored. One was still alive, but only just. Rebecca ended its sorry life as quickly as she could, as if to spare the poor thing any more misery.

"Christ, Chambers, snap out of it," she mumbled. It was hard for her at times not to act the teenage girl she was. Rebecca only wished she was in the company of Jill or Chris, who wouldn't hesitate to bring her back to reality when she needed it. More than that she longed for the company of the man with the 'Mother Love' tattoo, who she'd felt inexplicably connected to throughout their entire ordeal. She trusted him perhaps more than any other person, living or dead.

While Rebecca took the time to reload, the two civilians she'd managed to assist were sobbing into each other. The mother had tried to cradle herself protectively around her child, as if to shield her daughter from the horrors around them.

It wasn't until Rebecca turned to look at them, to figure out if either were injured, that she saw it. In the window behind them, a bloated zombie threw itself at the already ruined glass with just enough force to smash it.

"Down!" she shouted, but not quickly enough. As the zombie fell down on them, it collided heavily with both mother and daughter, knocking the unsuspecting duo down. Rebecca couldn't get a clear shot with them in a macabre dog-pile.

Her hands darted out to try and pull the civilians free without getting herself exposed to the virus, but all she could grab onto was the collar of the woman's shirt. She tugged as hard as she can and heard a loud tear of fabric before all she was left with was an off-white collar and the screams of a little girl as rotting teeth sunk into her skin.

Oh, god, no. Rebecca refused to believe it. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she aimed a kick for the vile creature, just hard enough to knock it aside. Not hard enough to dislodge its jaw from skin, which it then had a bloody mouthful of.

The child screamed and Rebecca took her shot as soon as she could get it.

"Baby," the mother cried, pushing her hands to the spot on her daughter's neck which was oozing sticky red blood. Her hands were soon covered in it, and the child's cries died out. "Baby, come on. Katie? Katie, talk to me."

Rebecca scanned the area once to make sure she wouldn't be risking immediate danger by assisting them, then dropped into a crouch by the mother's side. "Could you move your hands, please?" she asked, watching the child's lifeless face and blinking back her own tears. The last thing she needed to do was lose it in the midst of an outbreak. How the hell was she going to break the news to the mother?

"Hey," she turned to face the woman. She was pretty and blonde, wholly unfamiliar to the reclusive medic. "I need you to let go."

The woman shook her head and dropped her forehead to touch her daughter's. "No," she hissed, anger ringing clear as a bell in that single syllable. "Back off."

"Ma'am." Rebecca held up her hands as if in surrender, searching every inch of her brain for something worthwhile to say. How in the hell did you talk someone into abandoning their dead child? Desperate times called for desperate measures. "Ma'am, listen to me. If we don't go now, something's going to happen that you're really not going to like. Your daughter – Katie, she might..."

"I said back off!" The woman bared her teeth in anger, though it was despair which coloured her cheeks and sent hot tears spilling over her cheeks. "Get the hell away from us."

"I..." Rebecca gave the surrounding area a quick once over – while she couldn't see any immediate threats, she could already hear slow, heavy movements and unearthly groans. _One last try, Chambers, _she thought, _that's all you can do. _

As she rose to her feet, the young medic put a gentle hand on the grieving woman's shoulder. "Look," she said, "It's not safe to stick around here and if you can't..." God, she was pathetic. Rebecca couldn't even bring herself to say it – some professional she was.

Fortunately, she didn't need to utter another word. The mother shooed her away, she had made her decision, and while it was a stupid one, Rebecca knew she would probably have done the same if it was her daughter lying in a pool of blood. Parents had that obligation, didn't they?

But that didn't mean Rebecca was able to abandon them without wear on her conscience. She had taken only three steps before she had to stop and spare the gut-wrenching scene one last look over her shoulder. "If you..." she trailed off, the words sticking in her throat. "I'm headed to the police station."

The mother just barely nodded in acknowledgement, and Rebecca took that as a miracle given their circumstance. Even as she fled, leaving a stranger to die of her own accord, sadness welled up in her chest. No matter how much she saw, Rebecca would never be immune to those emotions.

She only wished she didn't have to face it alone the second - third? - time around.


End file.
